[A writer] should try not to be too far, personally, below the level of his work.

... into the novel goes such taste as I have for rational behaviour and social portraiture. The short story, as I see it to be, allows for what is crazy about humanity: obstinacies, inordinate heroisms, "immortal longings.

Almost everyone admits to hunger during the Opera.... Hunger is so exalting that during a last act you practically levitate.

We have really no absent friends.

we can surmount the anger we feel. To find oneself like a young tree inside a tomb is to discover the power to crack the tomb and grow up to any height.

Silence sat in the taxi, as though a stranger had got in.

Fantasy is toxic: the private cruelty and the world war both have their start in the heated brain.